Browser validation

[Els]

I have never heard anyone wanting a website actually talk about
IE5 or the blind or the mouseless or the mouse-shys or PDA's or
mobile phones without leading questions by me...

Me neither - they ask for "accessibility", and I recall one client
wanting the site to look good in IE5, cause that happened to be the
only browser they were using :\

I have made
websites for people in organizations who have IT depts that have
written specifications recommending or requiring accessibility
criteria, true, but these may as well be double-dutch - sorry Els
- to the particular hirer.

I didn't say they *understand* accessibility ;-)
They have just heard the accessibility buzz word, and want me to build
it like that. It's just a starting point though, I still have to
explain about tiny fonts, skip links, and the rest of it.

And from the look of almost every
other page at these organizations, no one seems to take a lot of
notice of these standards however generally competent and
generally useful these "non-assessible" pages are.

But I work for people who appreciate these standards, who can be
led to see they are good things. Just my experience I guess... So
I was thinking that when most people hire people to make a
website, it would be very few indeed who talked the talk.

Yup - few understand what it is, but the word itself is spreading

 

[Toby Inkster]

But the best conformant ones are (in descendant order):

Firefox 2.0
Opera 9.02
Safari 2.0.4
Icab 3.03

When you include DOM, perhaps. But for straight HTML+CSS make that:

Opera 9.02
Safari 2.0.4
Konqueror 3.5.2
Icab 3.03

Firefox doesn't pass the Acid2 test yet.

 

[Joe]

BTW I stopped testing in IE5 and 5.5. In FF and Opera I only apply the
latest version)

ummm Some "web statistics" sites indicate that IE5.x (for Win) is used
by more people than Opera v9.x . Sobering thought, if true. And it just
may be so - there are still people using Windows98.

http://www.upsdell.com/BrowserNews/stat_trends.htm

 

[rfr]

It seems to me that the W3 specifications need to be alot clearer for the
browser designers to use. They are too loose and open to diferent
intepretations. And it would even be more helpful if there were examples of
exactly what was to be the rendered result for the browser software people
to validate their work. There is a browser test kit, I think it is done by
Eric Meyer who was part of the standards committee.

It would even be better if ONE master coding of this as done in pseudocode
or something like that and licensed to other browser firms. This would
result in much closer cross-browser results.

 

[Nico Schuyt]

(e-mail address removed) says...

ummm Some "web statistics" sites indicate that IE5.x (for Win) is used
by more people than Opera v9.x .

Opera only for the View->Small screen

 

[Spartanicus]

Opera only for the View->Small screen

Testing a site with "Small Screen Rendering" mode using the desktop
version of Opera will only show you how it will look on a small screen
device that has a similar screen width and *if* it uses Opera as the
browser. It won't even come close to how it will look on a similar
device that *doesn't* use Opera as the browser. And Opera is also a
minority browser in the mobile segment.

The purpose of the SSR mode in the desktop version of Opera is
effectively an advertisement for how the proprietary Opera manipulation
of web pages can render web sites in a usable form despite the fact that
they have been designed for desktop usage.

It is delusional to think that if something displays fine using Opera's
SSR that it will do so on small screen devices in general.

 

[Nico Schuyt]

"Nico Schuyt" wrote:

[snip]
It is delusional to think that if something displays fine using
Opera's SSR that it will do so on small screen devices in general.

I will download the emulator from http://www.palmos.com/dev/tools/emulator/
Any other suggestions for testing?

 

[Toby Inkster]

It seems to me that the W3 specifications need to be alot clearer for the
browser designers to use. They are too loose and open to diferent
intepretations.

That's often intentional.

 

[Spartanicus]

I will download the emulator from http://www.palmos.com/dev/tools/emulator/
Any other suggestions for testing?

Test on the actual devices.

 

[Andy Dingley]

It seems to me that the W3 specifications need to be alot clearer for the
browser designers to use. They are too loose and open to diferent
intepretations.

If they'd done that, there would never have been "a web". We'd just
have an awful lot of separate AOLs, Compuserves and Blackbirds, none of
which interlinked usefully.

 

[Guest]

Toby Inkster wrote :

When you include DOM, perhaps. But for straight HTML+CSS make that:

Opera 9.02

Opera 9.x has a more extended support of CSS but I find that Firefox
1.5+ has a more accurate support of the properties it supports. So, its
kinda equal in that area. Of course, my opinion on this is debattable.

Firefox has a better support of HTML than Opera 9 in my opinion.
http://www.robinlionheart.com/stds/html4/results
lists some of the differences

Safari 2.0.4
Konqueror 3.5.2
Icab 3.03

Firefox doesn't pass the Acid2 test yet.

There is a reflow branch where Firefox builds pass the Acid2 test; for a
few months, Firefox passed the Acid2 test in that branch.

Gérard